contributors' biographies

John Isaac

Perhaps the most revealing images of John Isaac's work are the photographs he does not take. Whenever there is the slightest question of trespassing upon an individual's dignity, he puts his camera away. Once, in Rwanda, he even resigned his career of fifteen years, devastated by the inhumanity he was witnessing. Only after months of self-examination did he return to photography.

John grew up in a small village near the town of Tiruchchirappalli, in southern India. "My mother raised us by herself," he told us. "One of the most important lessons she taught me was never to take away a person's dignity." What prescient advice to a man who was to become the chief photographer of the United Nations, who now has been on assignment to over seventy countries.

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